Most economic models implicitly or explicitly assume that interactions between economic agents are 'global' - in other words, each agent interacts in a uniform manner with every other agent. However, localized interactions between microeconomic agents are a pervasive feature of reality. What are...

In this paper we consider the problem of sequential detecting change points in economic time series. We compare the performances of three well known procedures, Shiryayev-Roberts, CUSUM and EWMA, in the problem of early detection of the US business cycle turning points using leading indicators...

This paper is aimed at studying the determinants of currency crises suffered by Argentina from 1885 to 2003, on one hand, and at characterizing each particular currency crisis, on the other hand. Firstly, we identify crises episodes throughout the Argentine history. We apply the Eichengreen,...

Starting with the UK in 1981, many of the industrialized countries have issued long-term bonds whose principal value is indexed to the rate of inflation. One of the benefits that economists predicted from issuing such bonds is that the difference between the yield on indexed and nominal bonds...

The paper investigates the relationship between relative price movements and changes in the aggregate price level using monthly data on Finland’s Consumer Price Index and its components from the period covering the past eight and a half years. This was a period of very low inflation. The rate...

The financial turmoil that hit Russia in August 1998, was extremely confusing to many foreign observers working in Russia. It was astonishing to see a country that seemed on its way to prosperity suddenly experiencing an economic meltdown. As part of my work, I was often asked to provide...

This paper examines the combined influences of detrending and time aggregation on the measurement of business cycles. The approximate band- pass filter of Baxter and King (1999) performs relatively well in the sense that it retains the basic shape of disaggregate spectra and cospectra when...

Mismeasurement of inflation is likely to be more severe in a transition economy than in a more stable environment. Comparisons of self-reported changes in economic welfare with changes in incomes suggest that official Romanian inflation measures may be overstated by between 100 and 300 percent...

This paper analyses the consequences of the Nixon Administration’s policy of wage-price controls and finds that the controls were essentially ineffective in reducing inflation.

The goal of this paper is to provide a fair empirical comparison of two alternative explanations of the relationship between aggregate price and output. We compare the empirical performance of the sticky price and the Mankiw and Reis (2002) sticky information models. We put both models in a...